We know Martin Luther King Jr. was a national leader, but he was also an experienced community leader working with community leaders across the nation. Who were Nebraska’s black community leaders? Don’t miss this chance to add to your understanding of Nebraska’s Black leaders with this event!
- Hear presentations, original artwork, and poetry inspired by Lincoln’s Black leaders, created and performed by the Lincoln NAACP Youth Chapter.
- Virtually visit the Great Plains Black History Museum with its director, Eric Ewing.
- Celebrate these leaders by adding your impressions to an original, community art project by ArtReach.
- Let the live re-enactors of the “Descendents of Dewitty” take you back in time to the Cherry County settlement that was built literally from the ground up.
- Travel in your imagination to Cherry County Nebraska, with live re-enactors of the “Descendants of DeWitty” (sponsored by Humanities Nebraska) who built their community literally from the ground up. DeWitty, later known as Audacious, was the largest and longest-lasting African American settlement in rural Nebraska. The settlers, including former slaves who had fled to Canada before the Civil War and their descendants, began to arrive in 1906-07, attracted by the 1904 Kinkaid Act’s offer of 640 acres of free land in the Sandhills. Actual descendants of DeWitty re-enact stories of the settlement and its people, accompanied by historic photographs.
A Sign Language interpreter will be present during the event for deaf or hard of hearing persons.
